Child of the morning

by Gedge, Pauline, 1945-

  It was an awesome face, yet not frightening. The golden eyes were wide and farseeing, the golden mouth slightly smiling, and upon the august forehead the beautiful golden plumes of his Godhead reared, looking as if the slightest breeze would set them swaying. So he sat. Mighty Amun of Thebes, ruling the world from his tiny, dark sanctuary, receiving daily the adoration of Pharaoh after Pharaoh. Sometimes he was borne about the city, but he preferred to work his works here, in the mysterious dimness and perpetual twilight of his throne.

  Hatshepsut gazed upon him until her eyes swam and he seemed to dance. She closed her eyes again, seeing him grow and grow and tower over all things, mighty, invincible. In between bouts of shivering she touched her head to the floor in worship. But he did not speak. He did not welcome her or give her any sign, and desperation and misery grew in her as the night wore on. Far above, out in the world where there were stars and clouds and fresh winds, the horns blew midnight, and still the God did not speak to the despairing girl.

  Finally she put her head to the floor and left it there despite the complaining of her back. Amun, O my Father, she thought, defeated and tired, the words echoing in the empty, barren sanctuary of her mind, where she wandered, seeking him. Her limbs loosened. Her breath slowed. Somewhere there must be a door, somewhere a crack through which she might reach out to touch him.

  But now the cavernous expanse of oblivion called to her softly, hypnotically. ''Hatshepsut. Hatshepsut. Hatshepsut." There was a shaft of light up which she was gliding. It grew steadily brighter, and she found herself back in the sanctuary, face to face with a young man who leaned negligently against the God's knees. He was tall and very beautiful. His hair was short and golden, and his kilt was of gold tissue. His face was painted with gold, as were his feet, and the nails of his fingers and toes glittered in the lamplight. Hatshepsut did not know later whether he carried with him the brightness of the Sun or whether he sparkled because of the lamplight on him, but the room seemed full of warmth and a breath of the spring to come. She knew that never before in her life had she seen such a handsome face. His mouth was full and arrogant, his eyes large, his jaw swept up over a long neck, and his chin was square and cleft.

  As she put her hands out in worship, he laughed. ''By all means bow to me," he said, his voice strong and seeming as full of gold as the rest of him. "For I am a thousand thousand times greater than you, Hatshepsut. Here you stand, a Princess of Egypt, in nothing but a coarse kilt linen, while I go clothed in the Sun Himself." He held out a hand, fanning the fingers, admiring his nails. "I am beautiful, more beautiful by far than you whom they call the Flower of Egypt."

  Suddenly Hatshepsiit did not like him. God or not, he was as vain as herself and very dangerous. She half turned to the door.

  '*Oh, by all means, leave," he said. 'The door is unlocked, and no one will blame you for running demented from this place. After all, Amun is a powerful God, is he not? All men fear him and serve him, do they not? And you, you have more reason than any to do both, for he fathered you, did he not? Or did he?" The last question was asked in a derisory, sarcastic tone, and the young man put his head on one side and smiled at her knowingly.

  She stepped away from the door. **No man has spoken to me in that manner before," she said coldly.

  His golden eyebrows rose. ''But of course not!" he agreed. "None would dare question the holy conception of the Flower of Egypt." He was sneering now, the beautiful mouth twisted. "But I am not exactly a man, and I will say what I please to you, little girl pretending to be a princess."

  "Then you are a God?"

  "For shame, Hatshepsut! Do you not know who I am?" He stroked Amun's leg with one shimmering finger. "I ride in the Heavenly Barque every day. I journey with Ra, the King of the Living and the Dead, and bathe in his fire whenever I please. Do you still not know me?"

  "No."

  "I look over your shoulder when you preen in front of your mirror. I walk beside you in the garden, by the river. I saw you in the secret valley —oh, yes, and Senmut, too! A handsome cock, but too ambitious. Watch him, Hatshepsut, though you must love him. He will serve you as long as you have breath; I know that. You know it, too, do you not? But you must give him room to move, or he will destroy himself and break your heart. Oh, Hatshepsut, lovely Hatshepsut, how many kas have you?"

  "The Mighty Amun created fourteen for me!" She watched him, this rude, unpredictable youth, with wary eyes, expecting him to spring at her at any moment or to meow or to call forth more gods. Yet there was a something about him that she knew.

  He tripped lightly in front of the God with never a bow, and he quickly jumped and settled himself in Amun's lap. Hatshepsut gasped, but the golden boy just laughed that silly, high-pitched, slightly inane laugh again. "Fourteen! Such a generous God is our Amun! And what sex are they?"

  "Why, they are male."

  "Yes!"

  She ran forward suddenly. "I understand! You are one of my kas!"

  He raised a finger, after glancing swiftly at its golden nail again as if thirsty for a look at himself. "I am vain, selfish, grasping, arrogant, cruel,

  unpredictable, and thoroughly without scruples. How can I be you? For you, little peasant, are surely meek, unselfish, kindly, sweet, loving, and good. Is it not so?"

  She stamped her foot. ''Go away! You are playing with me, and I will not allow it!"

  He whistled. '*My, how good you are at giving orders. Do you never wake in the night and fear, wondering what would happen if no one obeyed you?"

  "Get out! You profane the God with your silly talking, and you are wasting my holy night with your trifles!"

  He pouted, the golden lips glistening. ''But this is my holy night, too. I must say that I prefer playing in the sun to being in this dark, cold, incense-ridden cell." He jumped lightly from his perch and landed in front of her, and she saw that even in his nostrils gold dust glittered. "You are to go on a journey, proud Hatshepsut. Tell me, what do you want? You must decide before you go, you know, or all the begging and incense in the world will not convince the river deities to listen to you for one moment. Old Amun only created the tools, you know."

  "How dare you!"

  He came closer. "Well, what do you want? Power? Might to make war? Gold running through your pretty hands like shining water? The worship of all men, particularly that hard, sober priest Senmut? What? What?"

  "You know what I want!"

  "I know what you think you want. How shallow you are, dear one. You think that it will be fun to rule Egypt and have all bow to you, the Daughter of the God, and you want to be adored, and you want to make the country do your will. Is it not so?"

  She put her hands to her ears. "Yes!" she shouted, sobbing. "Yes, it is so! Power I want, and all the rest!"

  "Well, you admit it. But there is more."

  "Yes, there is more. I truly believe there is more." Her hands fell to her sides. "What is greater than the good of Pharaoh, O my vile ka?"

  He skipped back to Amun. "Why, the good of Egypt."

  "Then we agree on this. I want the good of Egypt. That is what I want, and that is what I shall pray for on my journey."

  "But, of course, you are the good of Egypt." He smiled. "I think you are right. You do not deserve Egypt, but you will be a good Pharaoh. Now I advise." He patted his curls. "Beware of Thothmes, your brother. You know in your heart that he is the snake with the lazy eye who strikes quickly, but you do not know that it is as a father he will destroy you. Beware the priests of Amun, not the God; he cannot hurt you. Beware

  of yourself, of your vast ambitions. There! Now I am weary of your company, peasant, and wish to return to Ra." He yawned. ''And, oh, yes, Mighty Amun is pleased with you and blesses you, Hatshepsut. Go to bed now. It is dawn." He straightened. ''And there is one thing more. Before you leave Thebes, make saerifice to Montu. Thus will your reign be free from war. Not skirmishes," he finished, shaking a languid head, "just war."

  "O Mighty Amun," she said happily. "What a holy night i
t has been!" And when the High Priest came to escort her home, he found her still asleep and smiling, lying on her side with one arm about the foot of the God.

  ""^4

  5vk>r

  On the first day of Mesore, Hatshepsut and Thothmes set out on their journey. While he waited in the Royal Barge, she went into the temple and sacrificed a bull to Montu, watched by his silent, fierce priests. When she had finished, she left them to burn the carcass and joined her father on the boat. It was a glorious winter day, warm but with a slight breeze; the sky had lost the hard, bronzed look it had in summer and seemed to bend to them softly, bright and light and blue. The pennants of blue and white fluttered gaily from the two masts, and the golden prow slid from the steps and dipped into the water. As they pulled away, the company on the bank burned incense to Hapi, God of the Nile, and cast flowers for him upon the water, where they lay bobbing like a red carpet in the swell left by the barge. The supply skiff^s followed, all in a string, swinging with the current until they adjusted speed, and the whole flotilla moved slowly out of sight, sails of damask and gold thread slapping in the wind.

  Hatshepsut and Thothmes stood together, watching the city slip by. Behind them their breakfast waited under the roof of the cabin. The cabin's sides had been rolled up so that the royal pair could eat and enjoy the view, but they were not yet hungry enough to leave the bow. The smell of the river and the rushes and the thrusting, growing things mingled delightfully with a song of birds and a flashing of bright dragonflies. One settled for a moment on Hatshepsut's arm, and she had time to admire the quivering gossamer of the wings, blue and bright red, and the long, shiny black body before it tensed and darted away after a swarm of mosquitoes that floated by. She sighed, a sigh of pure delight. Never before had she left the city, and everything she saw was new to her. Ahead lay a time of feasts and informal delights, of days with her father, watching Egypt slide by, of nights gazing at the stars while the boat rocked her to sleep. She was as excited as the child she used to be.

  Thothmes felt satisfied as he watched the parted lips, the bright eyes, the brown hands grasping the rail. He was free of dispatches and lawyers and petty squabbles in the Courts of Justice for a while, and Ineni and his Viziers could sweat under the load of government. He planted his feet firmly on the deck and flung back his head, sniffing the wind. It had been

  a long time since he had left Thebes to make war or to visit his building sites. He was as excited as she, anxious to show her the incomparable delights of this land that was a true gift of the gods. Before they went into the cabin to eat, the city had been left behind and the river wound placidly through drowned fields and acres of sodden palms that bristled against the sky. The hills to the right and the left, five miles away, were misty in the humid air of winter, and a steam rose from the river as the sun climbed higher. They ate eagerly, laughing together over nothing and leaning back on their cushions to sip wine. By the time they moved out onto the deck to sit in their chairs under the canopy, the river was taking a long curve to the east and the cliffs had begun to march away from them, back into the desert.

  ''In another day they will return," Thothmes told her. 'They are never far from us, and well it is so, for the cliffs take the place of many divisions of soldiers and protect us most effectively from the roaming desert tribes. In three or four days we will reach Abydos, that holiest of places, but I do not want to disembark there. We will anchor and perhaps spend a night, but then we will press on.''

  She did not answer, engrossed as she was in watching the panorama of her kingdom unroll like a huge scroll. The sun had gained heat, and the river ran more swiftly. She could see the movement of the current ahead, pushing aside the stiller waters of the flood. When they slowly passed small villages, whose mud huts were roofed with papyrus and shaded by trees, she often noticed animals, chickens, and goats and sometimes cattle standing disconsolately and staring over their grazing fields, now under water. But the level of the flood had already dropped, and in one or two places the fellahin were already at work, their backs bent, straining after the plough or pacing in the ankle-deep mud, strewing seed upon the fertile ground. Once they sailed past a fisherman who sat in his little skiff, his line motionless, his chin sunk on his naked chest, and his head uncovered. He did not stir as they slipped quietly by.

  "A most agreeable pastime," Pharaoh remarked.

  Hatshepsut agreed fervently, thinking of Senmut and of how she had met him in the marshes by the river. She tried to picture his father as one of these fellahin, working unceasingly from dawn until dark, walking home to lentils and boiled papyrus shoots and thick black bread or perhaps a piece of roasted beef if he had been successful on market day. But there seemed to her to be no connection whatsoever between Senmut and his father, and she gave up, content to let her thoughts drift with the boat, watching it cleave the water like a golden crocodile, as silent and as beautiful.

  On the evening of the fourth day they came to Abydos. The sun was sinking behind the little town, and Hatshepsut could see nothing. But when Ra had gone and the sky was deep blue, dressed now in a high, white moon and a few early stars, she could see the white roofs of buildings hidden by palm trees and farther back the pylons and pillars of a temple. She huddled under her cloak in the winter chill, bemused by the silence, a silence she was unused to, being always surrounded by the noises of the living palace. The pale, ghostly buildings and black arms of the trees made her feel a little lonely. The barge tugged gently at her moorings in the reeds, and a night bird chuckled, rustling on its nest.

  'This is holy Abydos, where the head of Osiris lies," Thothmes told her quietly. '*As your mother cared for me, so Isis loved the God and collected the pieces of his poor, broken body from the ends of the earth. I have built here, but we will not linger. Abydos is not far from Thebes, and you will have opportunity again to explore it more. I am going to bed. In the morning we will perform the ceremonies for Osiris and then press on."

  He kissed her cold forehead and strode swiftly away, but Hatshepsut had not yet drunk her fill of the night. She stayed where she was, leaning over the side and watching the reflection of the aft lights far above her twinkle on the calm, oily surface of the water below. She pondered the murder of the Sun-God's Son and the dedication of his faithful Isis, and she walked around the deck, listening to her father's snores and the talk and subdued laughter that drifted over the water from the servants' skiffs. She was utterly alone with the dark sky and the cool wind, but she did not mind. The solitude was an extension of the self-discovery that had begun after the death of Aahmose, and she paced as her father often did, her brow furrowed, her eyes on the deck beneath her feet. Not until there was silence from across the water did she go to her couch.

  In the fresh, new morning the whole company gathered on the bank and solemnly sacrificed to Osiris. But the mood was gay, and when all was done, they trooped back on board and cast off quickly, men and masters glad to be under way once more. Hatshepsut had slept soundly and without dreams, waking to birdsong and the cool air that flowed like wine through her cabin. She and Thothmes sat on opposite sides of the breakfast table, eating as the sailors poled the barge to the middle of the river and hoisted the sails again. The wind was favorable, a following wind, and the sails gulped at it like a fish. From the stern the captain's voice rang out with a sharp order, and the patter of swift bare feet on the deck mingled most agreeably with the smell of fresh fish and warm goose eggs.

  Hatshcpsut had noticed a pile of ruins some two miles north of the town, and she remarked on it to Thothmes, who put down his bread, scowling.

  'That was once the temple of Khentiamentiu, the Jackal-God of Abydos," he grunted. "Now it lies desolate, not one stone still piled upon another. The wild animals have taken it for their abode." He spat on the floor. 'Tilthy, heathen Hyksos! Many hentis has it been since they left Egypt, driven forth in mighty anger by your illustrious forefathers. But still the wreck and sorrow they caused lives after them." He picked up h
is bread again, slapping meat onto it.

  ''Khentiamentiu," Hatshcpsut said, ''surely a God of power to the people of Abydos. I will rebuild for them, I think, and for him."

  Thothmes looked surprised. "Will you? Good! I have done what I can, but the empty shrines litter the land like seed husks when the fruit is gone, and the people still mourn. I will show you yet another ruin in five days time, Hatshcpsut. There you must go forth to see what this God has to say, for it is Hathor, and her temple at Gusae is a tangle of weeds and dead brush."

  They sailed on, and the country did not change. But in that time the river fell a few more inches, exposing a pattern of black and brown land, sometimes green with young crops and crisscrossed with dirt paths and everywhere trees and the vibrant flowers of winter that clustered or straggled in the fields and beside the river. Now and then a noble's estate hove into sight, its high walls running to the river, the paved water steps, the tethered skiffs, and the low, cool promenades and cloisters falling behind them like a dream; but this did not happen often, for they were far from any large city. They could see the blinding yellow sand between field and cliff and once in a while a lonely road that ran beyond the hills and out into the burning desert.

  After five days they came to a road that seemed to run right down into the river. Pharaoh ordered the anchor run out and the litters unloaded. While they waited, he pointed inland. "Gusae lies just behind the cliffs," he said, "and this road used to bring the villagers to the river. It is not much traveled now, and I have been considering stationing a detachment of troops up there in the hills, for brigands and the desert men have begun to creep in here, and life is not safe for the villagers who remain." He and Hatshcpsut climbed onto their litters, and the four-mile walk began. Before and behind marched four Followers of His Majesty, their eyes on the tops of the cliffs for any sign of movement, but the horizon remained empty of all save a few birds that wheeled high above them, too far away to be identified.